In 2017, Hurricane Maria caused immense damage to Puerto Rico and the surrounding Caribbean Islands. A report submitted by the Puerto Rican government to congress in 2018 estimated that it would require almost $140 billion for the island to fully recover. Eighty percent of the island were without power several weeks after the storm. It took Puerto Rico almost a year to restore power completely, and even still, the island’s infrastructure remains vulnerable to the heightened climate events, like many other parts of the country.
Puerto Rico’s energy utility (PREPA) developed an integrated resource plan (IRP) in June 2019, which Clinic Director, Dr. Liz Stanton, recommended the Puerto Rico Energy Bureau reject. Elements of the IRP included a proposed modernization of the grid over twenty years, with the installation of 1.4 GW of solar and 0.9 GW of battery storage, but also the retrofitting of oil-fired plants to burn natural gas and diesel. The Puerto Rican government also passed the Public Energy Policy Law of Puerto Rico, which establishes a 100 percent renewable goal by 2050, with intermediary goals of 40 percent renewables by 2025 and making coal obsolete by 2028.
Following Hurricane Maria, Governor Rosselló (who resigned after accusations of corruption), launched the privatization of PREPA. This process has been ripe with corruption too—PREPA established a no-bid contract with Whitefish Energy Holdings, which was connected to then-U.S. Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke, and Cobra Acquisitions, a large fracking company, earned $1.8 billion in federal contracts to repair the grid. Company officials were later charged with bribery and fraud.
Near the end of 2020, the Trump Administration announced the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) authorization of $9.6 billion to rebuild the island’s power infrastructure, a fraction of what is likely required to modernize the grid, ensure resiliency, and move towards renewables. New York State Governor Cuomo renewed an ongoing partnership with the New York Power Authority and PREPA to assist in developing a spending plan for FEMA’s funds, along with establishing other best practices. This year, PREPA issued a request for proposals to procure 1 GW of renewable energy resource capacity in February 2021. The future of Puerto Rico’s energy infrastructure, along with PREPA’s unstable process towards privatization, is plagued with uncertainty, even as ongoing partnerships and aid packages are assisting in slowly modernizing the grid.
